Salsaboston.com all started innocently enough
as a text file I compiled about where to go Salsa dancing.
I had just picked up Latin dancing as a new hobby sometime
in 1997 or so, I forget exactly. Soon I found myself emailing
my info friends who were interested--or moreover that I
wanted to get interested since I was hooked! Finally
it got so crazy trying to email this stuff all the time,
especially when people started asking me for it, so
I decided to try out web programming one day. This was the
early days of the web, keep in mind. So it al turned it
into a web page to simplify life. Hah...!
Soon it was linked to from all over the place and listing
info and inquiries come in pretty much daily. That was cool!
Keep it coming, but please keep in mind that this page is
a public service, both to disperse information to the local
dancers and a place for the promoters to advertise what's
up. I don't get paid for maintaining it. However,
if you go to a club, concert, class, etc. that you learned
about through my page, please let the the club or instructor,
etc. know that you saw it here.

In May, 1999, I finally acquired the domain "salsaboston.com"
to move the site away from my MIT internet access, given
the traffic the site started getting. While I hadn't
really explored salsaweb.com,
the greatest international Salsa dancing web site on the
net (founded by--now friend--Edie Lewis ("The
SalsaFreak") and a whole bunch of other neat people)
it turned out coincidentally that my site had developed
into something very similar but on a local/regional level.
Since it was a good match, Edie appointed me part of
the family by making me the Boston correspondent to
the cityguides
section. Check it out if you're traveling!

I started logging hits in May, 1998, and my old page at
MIT reached a steady 1000 visits per month (whoa!, but were
you surfing in 1999?). When salsaboston.com was launched,
that jumped quickly to 1500-2000 visitors per month, and
I started using web develpment software instead of hand
coding.... By the summer of 2000, the site was getting
5000 visitors per month and 15,000 page views. Yeaowh!
(The site is now hosted by a great people at http://itxdesign.com.
If you're looking for web hosting, drop Paul a note and
tell him I sent you.)

So, nowdays the purpose of the site is to create salsa
dancers and to put Boston on the international Salsa
dancing MAP! (Update 2005: In fact, I think we've
done that!) To make this happen, I'm looking for content
contributors! If you would like to write some articles
on the Boston scene, your experiences, local Salsa personalities,
club reviews, ideas, etc. etc. etc., please drop
me a line.

Sometime around 2000 SalsaBoston
Entertainment was created, as a spin-off of the website.
I and a few friends decided we'd open a Salsa Night at the
now defunct Sophia's Nightclub. The night became a mainstay
night over the next six months, and the SalsaBoston team
grew. Eventually we started doing not just Salsa
nights, but lessons, the
harbor cruises, annually the Boston
Salsa Congress™, and generally trying to have
a good time! Join us!

...and
who's this Olaf guy anyway?!!

Someone told me the other [year...] they met
someone "who knew of me", someone who had danced
locally a lot but never met me. In fact, she and her
friends wondered if I even existed... or if I was perhaps
some sort of marketing consortium or something (kind of
like Shakespeare). Well, I'M
REAL and here you have it! A picture of me dipping
my dance partner Anja at the beach at the Curacao
Salsa Tour 2000!

I'm American born, a pure gringo (maybe Viking blood or
something northern European), German family, grew up in
Colorado and Miami, but I started Latin dancing in Boston
long after I left Miami to attend MIT. In my working
life in case you're wondering, I'm a consulting engineer
in and around MIT and I live in Admiral's Hill, Chelsea.

Please enjoy my site, send me information
and comments, feel free to add links to it in your own pages
(please let me know if you do), and see you at the clubs!